The EU referendum shows how the sovereignty of Britain's people can now trump its Parliament

British MP Boris Johnson and his wife Marina are photographed as they leave after voting in the EU referendumCredit:
Matt Dunham/AP

The referendum puts a weapon in the hands of the people. Politicians cannot predict how it will be used, nor control the outcome. The constitutional and political repercussions of the EU referendum will be profound, the outcome of a grassroots insurgency. The people have delivered an instruction which the Government and Parliament will have to obey.

Wake up. We do not have to do this. We can stop this madness through a vote in Parliament.David Lammy

The Government is also required to put measures in train which a majority of the Cabinet warned would be disastrous. David Cameron has drawn the inevitable conclusion and decided to resign – an honourable decision by an honourable man. He may draw comfort from an observation by Iain Macleod, Tory colonial secretary in the 1960s. The Conservatives, he said, were a generous party. They always forgave those who are wrong; sometimes they even forgave those who are right. Cameron’s successor, most likely a Brexiteer and beholden to the Conservative Party’s Right wing, will have to confront harsher realities at home and abroad.

Many Brexiteers no doubt hoped that with one bound Britain would be free, that she could repeal the European Communities Act with immediate effect, stop sending “£350 million a week” to Brussels and control immigration from the EU, and even beyond. In fact, the only change that occurs immediately is that the settlement agreed with the EU in February, involving, among other changes, restrictions on the rights of EU migrants to claim benefits, will no longer come into effect.

But immediate repeal of the European Communities Act would be contrary to the legal procedures laid out in the Lisbon Treaty of 2007. It would also be impracticable. There is a huge corpus of EU law, said to cover more than 80,000 pages of the statute book, the result of 43 years of membership. Much of this is in the form of EU regulations which have become part of UK law without needing ratification by Parliament. Some of this corpus of law, on such matters as equal opportunities in the workplace and workers’ rights, we would wish to retain; some we might seek to retain in modified form or to repeal. It will be Parliament’s task to decide, and this will take time. For now, Parliament will probably decide to incorporate all EU secondary legislation so that it remains in force unless and until it is decided whether to amend or repeal it.

Watch | Tory strife and surviving the EU referendum

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Britain will not leave the EU until the withdrawal agreement, provided for by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty has been signed. A withdrawal agreement, however, is not the same as a trade agreement, but deals primarily with such technical matters as the rights of EU citizens in Britain, the rights of British citizens in the EU and reciprocal health arrangements. The Brexiteers are not united on whether there should be a trade agreement with the EU nor on what it should involve.

Should the Brexiteers seek a free-trade agreement with the EU, or should Britain do without an agreement, relying on World Trade Agreement rules? The paradox is that Britain could probably best prosper outside the EU by a policy of unilateral free trade and by seeking to attract high-skilled immigrants. But that is diametrically opposite to the policy of the Faragistes, the leaders of the insurgency, and most of their supporters, who seek protection against the consequences of globalisation and rigorous control of immigration.

The new prime minister will not enjoy a majority for Brexit in the Commons, since more than two-thirds of MPs are opposed to it. The Commons, therefore, is unrepresentative. That is the case for a general election. Some may struggle against further recognition of the claims of the insurgents. Perhaps they would prefer the humiliation of being required to vote for things they do not believe. The people, however, have become, for constitutional issues at least, a third chamber of the legislature, with the power to issue instructions which the politicians cannot ignore. The sovereignty of the people trumps the sovereignty of Parliament.